The present invention provides for transmission of data information along with any standard television or computer video signal for reception by a "smart card" held near the television screen. This "smart card" can be embodied in a credit card, debit, affinity or identification card. The for the purpose of recording and storing the data information that can be presented at a point of purchase location, value redemption site, or benefit redemption venue, where the cardholder can redeem discounts, values, offers, or benefits by retrieving the data information from the smart card for example by a person and light scan readable display.
Traditionally, discounts and other such benefits, e.g. free samples and the like, have been provided or authorized by way of hard copy printing of coupons in newspapers, mailer brochures and the like. While such printed authorizations, e.g. coupons have been effective and extensively used, they have presented certain problems. Printed coupons require a substantial amount of time to prepare and deliver to the potential user. For example, one may need three months or more to print and deliver such printed coupons. The need for the promotion may change during that time. The present invention over comes such problems and permits almost instantaneous delivery of the benefit authorization and a very early use of the benefit authorization thereby better meeting the objectives of the company providing the benefit by data transmission of the authorization by commercial television. Such benefit authorization by data transmission using commercial television has not been known in the past.
Transmission of data together with television signals are known, including but not limited to, for example: Vertical Blanking Interval (VBI) data transmissions--typically Teletext and Closed captioning; FM broadcast radio subcarrier, and Cellular telephone-like data transmission systems. Such prior systems have been complex and not readily available to most television viewers.
Vertical Blanking Interval (VBI) has traditionally been a favorite place for placing data signals. Federal regulations allow virtually any information to be transmitted in VBI. While VBI may be used in carrying out the present invention, VBI is not the preferred manner of carrying out the present invention. VBI data is concentrated in a small area of time within the video signal and is susceptible to many kinds of over-the-air transmission impairments. The effect on VBI system performance is a data rate dependent. Therefore as more data (higher rate) is squeezed into this small area the more likely errors are to occur. Impairments that destroy VBI, do not affect the data signal of the preferred embodiments of the present invention.
VBI requires a relatively complex decoder connected by wire or other means to the receiver of the television signal. The preferred embodiment of the present invention relies only on the light emanating from the TV set. The preferred embodiment of the present invention has the advantage that no wired connection to the video system is required and the signal survives transmission impairments.
Closed captioning is an example of a slow data rate VBI signal. Teletext is a higher data rate VBI signal. Picture waveform errors caused by distortions and ghosts result in the data being superimposed or added randomly with a delayed copy of itself, thus complicating clock and data recovery. This cross contamination is one cause of inter-symbol interference that can create a difficulty in detecting the difference between ones and zeros. The preferred embodiment of the present invention does not have problems of this nature.
VBI is also easily removed and routinely replaced along the signal transmission path by common processing amplifiers. The data signal of the preferred embodiment of the present invention is not easily lost, removed or affected because the signal of the present invention is dispersed in time with great redundancy.
The preferred embodiment of the present invention is free of interferences that are common to VBI systems, such as ghosts, non-linear distortions, group delay or K factor errors, AM transmitter errors like differential phase and gain, intermodulation products, incidental phase modulation as well as noise sources such as ignitions, atmospheric interference, and arcing motors in home appliances. Since the transmission of data of the present invention utilizes a low data rate that is dispersed in time, the effects of such transmission problems are significantly minimized. The redundancy resulting from placing the same low level signal on virtually all the active video makes the data very tolerant of impairments. In fact, the television picture would have to become un-watchable before the data signal would be harmed. The signal has been successfully tested in the laboratory making off-air recordings on poorly maintained and miss-tracking home video cassette recorders.